I hope that someone has an answer that i didn't found. Last friday my Apple TV 2 pops up with an update. I tought i disabled the update functionality via the proper way. After this XBMC does not seem to work anymore and crashes often with 720/1080 *.mkv files.
When i restored the device to factory defaults it seems to been installed with IOS 4.3 .

After research for hours i'm "brain fried". It seems that the only way to downgrade your Apple TV 2 device to 4.2.1 is with shsh blob file that is obtained via Tinyumbrella. The only file that i can obtain is the 4.3 because the other one is gone after the restore <=--stupid me .

There is an post for an tethered jailbreak for 4.3 that is positive. Only i found also an post of the development team that XBMC is not working on IOS 4.3 because the HW decoder uses changed API calls.

Can somebody help me with an solution to get XBMC working again. Hopefully ther is an way to downgrade this device without the shsh blobs?

Development Team: Do you think that XBMC will work in the near future on IOS 4.3 ?

Hudson_Hawk04 Wrote:if you can wait hold off until the jailbreak catches up, if not go with the tethered. Its your call, I suppose you could do some digging and see if you can turn up the progress.

Hudson the jailbreak is not the problem. I think that between now and a week there will be an untethered jailbreak. Only XBMC does not support IOS 4.3. I hope the development team will re-write there code.

jmunnik Wrote:Hudson the jailbreak is not the problem. I think that between now and a week there will be an untethered jailbreak. Only XBMC does not support IOS 4.3. I hope the development team will re-write there code.

The only bit that's not working is the h264 hardware decoding. the rest is fine and the team is working on the bits that are broken.

If you do not have your blobs, there is no going back. You're only option is to tether break on 4.3 and live with the issues until they are resolved.

jmunnik Wrote:Hudson the jailbreak is not the problem. I think that between now and a week there will be an untethered jailbreak. Only XBMC does not support IOS 4.3. I hope the development team will re-write there code.

From the forums here it sounds like the XBMC devs are working on the hardware decode fix. With a little luck there'll be an untethered jailbreak and XBMC hardware decoding on iOS 4.3 /w before next weekend.

jmunnik Wrote:Thank you guys for all the info !! I hope they fix the h264 decoding. All the films that i have downloaded are h264 because i thought this is the best format for Apple TV 2.

If i look in the handbrake conversion tool i see this format as default. Wich default format are you guys using on your ATV2 with XBMC ?

They'll fix the hardware decoding. Apple made some changes to the API so the XBMC devs just need to update to incorporate those changes. At least one or two devs said they were working on it so shouldn't take too long and will almost certainly happen.

I always encode with h264 when using Handbrake since it's the default for the relevant devices (atv2, iphone). It's a safe bet that most people are doing the same.

XBMC crashing on h264/x264 files is temporary... my guess is we'll see an update within a week or so. Maybe it'll get fixed in the XBMC version that gets merged into the main trunk.

It is possible to revert to 4.2.1 without shsh blobs. To be brutally honest, I have no idea what "shsh blobs" even are, and I reverted after having accidentally updated.

You will need:
1) iTunes
2) ATV2 IPSW file for iOS 4.2.1 (Google search, took me a minute, but I found it)

Just download the IPSW, connect your ATV2 to your computer with the micro USB cable, then SHIFT-click the "restore" button that you normally use to restore/update. Shift-clicking allows you to choose a file to "update" from, rather than download the latest.

Who knows why Apple implemented this feature, but they gave you a way out of your mistake.

Don't know how this could work for you. I did this and got the message that "this device is not eligible for this build"! When did you do this... A few days back it worked cause apple still signed 4.2.1... But now it is over...